Still Waiting to Be Impressed

I finally broke down and saw the 2003 movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a few years ago. To paraphrase a line from Roxanne:

I heard it was going to be bad, but I didn't expect it to be... bad.

The sad part is that with a little effort and foresight, many of this movie's problems could have been avoided in a way that even a die-hard Alan Moore fan like myself -- who was quite an aficionado of the original Moore comic book series which alleged inspired this movie -- would be won over.

Wanna have a vampiric character go out in the sunlight? Then take a cue from author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and EXPLAIN why she can be out in the sunlight. Show her wearing earth-filled shoes or mention that it is okay for her to appear on cloudy days or something. As many readers of the original Bram Stoker novel have noted, the whole “sunlight kills vampires” thing is mostly a Hollywood invention anyway.

But hey, if John Sayles can take time in The Howling to have a character explain what works and does not work against werewolves, then why not a similar exposition scene in this movie?

Also, if you are going to set a film's story in Venice, it might be a good idea to actually film in a locale that looks like Venice. And not like, say, Prague... And if you wish to have a car chase -- which would be dubious enough in a movie set in the Victorian era -- it might be a good scene to write your script in such a way that said chase does not take place in Venice.

While I am at it, that last scene in the movie was supposed to be... What? A homage to Fritz Leiber's short story, “The Automatic Pistol”?

Even if I could bring myself to forgive these nitpicks, there is still the fact that the story just does not work. The script takes a handful of fictional characters who were already famous, drafts them into the Victorian equivalent of the Dirty Dozen and yet depicts them as being just so eager to help out their comrades in arms that it seems ridiculous. Okay, maybe not as ridiculous as the sight of a confessed vampire using the mirror in her compact to adjust her makeup -- but still ridiculous.

Granted, it would probably have taken a mini-series to do Alan Moore’s original work proper justice and even then they would probably screw something up...

In the meantime, there is always the original comic book series...